Pairing up two criminals from different backgrounds and times, Smooth Criminals promises to deliver a female-empowered series full of mystery, crime, and some big pay-offs. I can’t wait to see where Brenda and Mia go next!
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
Set in 1999 San Francisco, we are soon introduced to Brenda. Her life is not glamorous, and her social skills may be lacking, but she’s good at hacking and that’s were her true purpose lies. If only the world would recognize Killa-B for the power she wields.
In her real, off-line life, Brenda is a student at San Juniper Community College, doing work-study at the computer lab. Her boss, Serge, appears to be the bane of her existence, but whatever menial job he assigns her, she has to do. This time around, it’s cleaning out the old science storage room, since they’re giving it to the computer department for housing the new server. But old, buried secrets are soon to be uncovered there.
During her clean-up, Brenda discovers something covered up that says it’s property of the US government. Intrigued, she digs deeper and finds that it’s a cold storage device that used to be owned by Friese Dynamics. That would be tempting enough, but when Brenda hacks into the system, she triggers it to reveal a young woman who emerges from its hold. Before Brenda can ask many questions, though, the escaped cold-freeze lady makes a run for it and it’s up to Brenda to track her down. Hard work for a normal person, but Brenda/Killa-B is not a normal person.
Without much effort, Brenda hacks the city’s mainframe and takes control of traffic lights, ATMs, and more to slow down the woman and corral her to a cafe so that Brenda can find out what’s going on. And that’s where the mystery just deepens. The lady turns out to be Mia Corsair, a famed jewel thief from 1969 who was on her way to make a big score with the net of Indra before her run-in with the cold pod. Thirty years and a whole lot of technology change later has put Mia at a disadvantage if she wants to finish her job. That’s where Brenda proves to be vital.
Killa-B has the hacking skills, Mia has the hands-on thievery skills, and together they could take down the world or whatever part of it they wanted. And thus begins a partnership that is sure to be filled with a lot of adventure and missteps. With two agents on their trail, after finding out Brenda discovered the pod and Mia had escaped from it, the duo needs to dodge a lot of danger if they hope to achieve their criminal goals. I’m looking forward to seeing where this series takes them and how a pair of mismatched women learn to work together. It’s going to be fun!
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
